took the tram out of the city and struck
into the country. The leaves still lingered brown and red upon the
trees. He carried her cloak and opened gates for her and held back
brambles while she passed. She had always been indifferent to these
small gallantries; but to-day she welcomed them. She wished to feel her
power to attract and command. They avoided all subjects on which they
could differ, even in words. They talked of people and places they had
known together. They remembered their common love of animals and told of
the comedies and tragedies that had befallen their pets. Joan's regret
was that she had not now even a dog, thinking it cruel to keep them in
London. She hated the women she met, dragging the poor little depressed
beasts about at the end of a string: savage with them, if they dared to
stop for a moment to exchange a passing wag of the tail with some other
little lonely sufferer. It was as bad as keeping a lark in a cage. She
had tried a cat: but so often she did not get home till late and that was
just the time when the cat wanted to be out; so that they seldom met. He
suggested a parrot. His experience of them was that they had no regular
hours and would willingly sit up all night, if encouraged, and talk all
the time. Joan's objection to running a parrot was that it stamped you
as an old maid; and she wasn't that, at least, not yet. She wondered if
she could make an owl really happy. Minerva had an owl.

He told her how one spring, walking across a common, after a fire, he had
found a mother thrush burnt to death upon her nest, her charred wings
spread out in a vain endeavour to protect her brood. He had buried her
there among the blackened thorn and furze, and placed a little cross of
stones above her.

"I hope nobody saw me," he said with a laugh. "But I couldn't bear to
leave her there, unhonoured."

"It's one of the things that make me less certain than I want to be of a
future existence," said Joan: "the thought that animals can have no part
in it; that all their courage and love and faithfulness dies with them
and is wasted."

"Are you sure it is?" he answered. "It would be so unreasonable."

They had tea at an old-fashioned inn beside a stream. It was a favourite
resort in summer time, but now they had it to themselves. The wind had
played pranks with her hair and he found a mirror and knelt before her,
holding it.

She stood erect, looking down at him while seeming